


A Little Bit Of Loving Makes Everything Right

by luninosity



Series: Oh Boy! Or, Life's Better With A Buddy Holly Soundtrack [3]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) RPF
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Established Relationship, Hurt!James, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Injuries, cameos from the Neverwhere cast, protective!Michael
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-04
Updated: 2013-01-04
Packaged: 2017-11-23 16:11:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/624061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James gets hurt, Michael gets a terrifying (and occasionally entertaining) phone call, and everyone gets some comforting and cuddling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Little Bit Of Loving Makes Everything Right

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a request of _hurt/comfort with hurt!James and comforting!Michael, something relatively minor, like an accident or a cold, and happy fluff_. (And, if anyone else has requests in this 'verse, feel free to ask!) Title, opening, and closing lines from Buddy Holly’s “Oh Boy!”; and also, if you've not heard Christopher Lee's heavy-metal Christmas carol performances, I highly advise that you do...

_stars appear and shadows are falling_  
 _you can hear my heart a-calling_  
 _a little bit of lovin' makes everything right_  
 _I'm gonna see my baby tonight_

 

Michael’s mobile phone goes off the second he steps through the door. He yells, “Wait!” at it—James, who converses with every inanimate object they own, is a terrible influence on him—and then attempts to simultaneously untangle himself from wet grocery bags and kick off damp shoes and excavate his phone from his back pocket.

He utterly fails to do all of the above, and instead nearly drops the phone, courtesy of wet fingers; says, “Fuck!” and winces as the glass bottles—James’s ridiculous marshmallow vodka, the flavor he’d fallen in love with at Ian McKellen’s colorful party the week before—hit the floor. The phone goes silent, reproachfully.

That’s James’s ringtone, of course; his phone plays the classic Star Trek theme when James calls, because James has programmed it to do so in some sort of cheeky attempt to irritate Michael’s Star Wars sensibilities. Michael’d just laughed, the first time, and left it.

James shouldn’t be calling him in the middle of the afternoon. James should be busy. Working. They’d been making jokes about that only that morning, Michael being the house-husband and James earning their income, though the truth was that Michael’d needed the break, and James had deliberately taken the radio-play role for the BBC in part out of an undying admiration for Neil Gaiman’s work and in part simply because it let them both stay here, in London, and home, together, for the holiday weeks.

Michael’s been loving it all, the lazy days, waking up beside James and kissing him good morning, spending afternoons playing Assassin’s Creed—which, no matter what James claims, is completely character research for the upcoming role—and having dinner ready by the time James gets home, all bright-eyed and excited about the day’s adventures in the fantastical magical London of Neil Gaiman’s imagination. He _likes_ having dinner ready for James, and seeing that sudden brilliant grin, as blue eyes investigate whatever flavors Michael’s come up with this time. Likes tumbling James into bed at night, breathless and laughing under the happy chatter of the rain. Likes all their little routines, the ones that they’re learning and negotiating, day by day.

So maybe he is a well-domesticated house-husband, after all. He’s surprisingly comfortable with that.

Except this isn’t any part of any of the routines. James doesn’t randomly call him, mid-day. James should be locked in a studio with a supporting cast that’d make any film producer weak at the knees, pretending to sip tea and fight off the Great Beast of London with a spear.

He’s feeling very cold, now. And it’s not from the rain. It’s a cold that stretches burning-ice fingers up from his gut, and wraps around his heart, and squeezes.

He’s about to call back, has his finger poised to tap, and then the phone goes off shrilly in his hand and he jumps and trips over a forgotten grocery bag and almost drops the stupid bit of technology _again_.

“James?”

“Michael?” Not James. And Michael’s world tilts sideways.

It’s Benedict—that voice is instantly recognizable, it always is. But Benedict sounds concerned. Worried. Anxious, perhaps.

Michael refuses to let himself consider the word _afraid_.

“Give me back my phone, you idiot, you’re probably terrifying him!” That one sounds like James’s voice. Except James’s voice doesn’t have that sharp edge of ragged pain inside the cheerful annoyance. Or never has before.

“Stand up and get it then—Michael, sorry, but he won’t let us take him to any hospital or—”

“You’re all making an enormous deal out of nothing and it’s just I don’t feel like standing up—”

“Only one of us knows anything about first aid here, you know, perhaps you should all listen to me—”

“If we don’t, are you going to start singing lines from _Rocky Horror_ again?”

“What the _hell_ is going on?!” Michael shouts at the phone, and his voice doesn’t sound like his, and maybe that’s the fear, or the blood thumping in his ears, but the world hasn’t stabilized yet and he takes a step back and runs into the doorframe and his legs nearly buckle. “James?”

“Give me that, you moron—thank you—Michael?”

_“Are you all right?”_

“I love you, and they’re all overreacting, I’m fine—”

“Okay, no more phone for you, you can’t be trusted not to lie!”

“I thought you were on my side,” James says, presumably to Natalie and not to Michael. “Traitor. Traitoress. Anne Boleyn. —Seriously, Michael, it’s not that bad, and it was entirely my fault, and stupid anyway, I sort of tripped over Benedict in the doorway, after the break, and I might’ve landed on my knee a little bit—”

And now Michael’s just going to have to murder Benedict. No other option, really. Benedict’s managed to hurt his James.

“I love you, too. Always. _How_ bad?”

“Ah…”

“He’s sitting on the floor,” Benedict says, either reclaiming the phone or far too close to James for Michael’s liking, “and a few minutes ago he tried to stand up and turned a really interesting shade of white and said some fairly impressive words, did you know he had that filthy a vocabulary, because that could be really fun if—”

There’s an abrupt scuffle, a pause, and then an extremely familiar voice comes on the line. “Michael? Are you there?”

“Um,” Michael says, because now _Christopher Lee_ is talking to him, and James is on the floor and hurt without him, and the rain is pounding away on the rooftop above his head, and nothing in the world is making any sense.

No. One thing makes sense. He needs to be there, not here. Needs to be at James’s side.

James, who’s had one particular weakened knee for years now, since the cruel reality of that accident on the _Wanted_ set, old never-quite-mended injuries that he’s only finally reluctantly admitted to Michael bare weeks ago, the aches blooming from promise to presence with the onset of winter cold and rain.

Michael, entrusted with this piece of James’s life, has spent the past few weeks eying every step for the slightest hint of a limp, tugging James’s legs into his lap on the sofa and massaging sore muscles, purchasing every wrap and supportive device and heating pad known to man, and finally earning himself a lecture in that amusedly exasperated Scottish accent, regarding the need to stop and breathe and cease smothering for a while, unless he would especially like to wake up tied to the bed with all of his purchases.

He’d had to laugh, and give in, at that threat, delivered with that expression. James’d kissed him, a bit too smugly, though Michael couldn’t in good conscience argue with the smugness. James _was_ fine, had been fine for years without him—though that thought stung a bit, too; James hadn’t been, not really, not waking up alone and afraid and facing nightmares in the dark, when Michael’d not been there to comfort him—and would be even more fine for years to come. _With_ him.

They were going to be fine together.

And now this.

And he’s not even _there_.

“I’m honestly okay,” James is protesting, in the background, “look, I’m pretty sure I can stand up, now, the ice absolutely helped, so if I just—”

“Young man, you will sit down or I will order David Harewood to sit upon you.”

“Why him?”

“Why me?”

“Why not me? I wouldn’t mind.”

“He is doing nothing else of any use at the moment, and you, Mr Cumberbatch, are an overenthusiastic puppy. Remain in your corner. James, cease arguing with me for the sake of argument and leave the ice where it is—yes, even though it’s cold. Michael?”

“Yes sir?” It’s automatic. It’s the voice. Seems to be working on James, too, who stops trying to get words in from the floor.

“He is not all right, but he’s not badly hurt. I promise you that.”

Oh god. Michael leans helplessly against the compassionate doorframe. Christopher Saruman Lee is trying to reassure him, and James is still hurt, and what the fuck is he still doing here when he should be there already—

“Young Anthony—” Probably no one else in the world would refer to Anthony Stewart Head as _young Anthony,_ Michael’s brain notes irrelevantly. “—has some experience with first aid, and there was a very well stocked emergency kit in the studio, and we’ve been wrapping your young man up in bandages and the ice has helped with the swelling, and he should be all right just staying off his feet for a while, though why he keeps refusing painkillers I’ve no idea—”

“James,” Michael whispers, into the phone, “take the damn painkillers, please—”

“I can’t.” James sounds surprisingly calm, though still with that trace of pain that makes Michael want to fly through the mobile connection and fling arms around him and banish all the hurt into nothing. “I’ll tell you why later. It’s not—I mean, it isn’t anything you need to worry about, or—I only don’t like the side effects, that’s all, all right? Just…please come take me home.”

Michael’d been opening his mouth to say something else, but those last words echo too wearily across the connection, not merely a trace of pain now, and he ends up simply promising, “I love you. I love you, I’ll be right there, I’m on the way right now, please don’t move or stand up or—and I’m putting you in bed when we get home and not letting you walk _anywhere_ , at least not for as long as you’ll let me—”

“Sounds like a plan.” The exhaustion’s a bit more apparent, this time. Michael bites his lip. Forces back the swell of panic that’s spiked upwards at the simplicity of that agreement. James doesn’t accept assistance that easily. Not even his. As desperately as Michael wants to give it.

Except it seems that, right now, James does.

He leaves the groceries on the floor where they’ve fallen. Grabs the keys, spins around, and bolts back out the door.

James’s car, old and battered and noisy, ordinarily regards Michael with deep misgiving, doubtless suspecting how much he’d rather be on the motorcycle; today, however, it starts for him on the first try, and purrs like a kitten when he sets a hand on the gearshift.

Of course the car knows. The whole universe knows, and is frightened for James. Provides green lights and open roads the entire drive. Michael vows eternal gratitude in return, inaudibly, pleadingly, and slams his foot down on the accelerator.

He’s not on the approved studio visitor list, as the obtuse middle-aged security man tries to tell him; Michael leans out of the car window, snarls, “My partner’s in there and he’s hurt and _you are keeping me from him_ ,” and the man gulps, backs off, and opens the gate. Michael relents enough to toss back a “Thank you,” which makes the man look even more terrified, and then pushes the car onward again.

Inside the studio, he hears the voices before he sees anyone. They’re singing, they’re actually singing, and they’re singing Christmas carols of all things, Benedict and Christopher Lee and Anthony Head and a light female voice that’s probably Natalie, and James, of course, accent like merry whisky and luscious gold and the center of Michael’s soul, only James isn’t really properly singing because he keeps dissolving into laughter at whatever’s going on, and if James is laughing then James isn’t on the floor in voiceless agony or collapsed into unconsciousness or bravely fighting back the sobs of distress.

He flings himself through the door, following the cheerfulness like a lifeline into the meeting room, the one that gets used for read-throughs and practice takes. And then stops, breath catching in his chest at the scene, at the head-to-toe dizzying wave of relief.

James. His James. Sitting enthroned in one of the plushly-cushioned meeting-room chairs, wounded leg propped up on a second one; laughing out loud, rich and warm and entertained, as his fellow cast members jump around the other end of the table and try to turn “Silent Night” into some sort of Morris-dance-crossed-with-death-metal, or at least that’s what it sounds like to Michael’s traumatized ears.

James waves a hand at them, still snickering. “Definitely better than any painkillers, go on, do ‘Good King Wenceslaus’ this time…” and they all promptly trip over each other trying to obey, at least until James, shaking hair out of his eyes, tips his head and catches a glimpse of Michael hovering in the doorway and drinking in the sight of him.

“Michael!”

“Don’t get up!” This comes from at least five sources, but Michael’s is the loudest, and his arms go around James and hold on.

And James reaches for him and holds on, too, and Michael realizes then that he was wrong, before: James has been acting brave, in the face of the pain, all along.

“Okay,” he murmurs, quietly, into the closest ear. “You’re all right, you’re going to be all right, I’ve got you, we’re going home now, I promise, I love you,” and James nods, sending hair brushing along Michael’s face.

“Okay,” he says again, and puts an arm around broad shoulders and then pauses, studying the bandaged knee, supportive wrappings visible below shoved-aside jeans, and wondering how best to pick James up without further injury.

At the far end of the room, Christopher and Anthony exchange significant glances, probably in regard to Michael’s utter unconcern for anyone else in the room and James’s sudden willingness to be taken care of after all, and then suggest, in thoughtful unison, “Kidnap the chairs.”

They actually do. This works well enough to get James out of the building and into the car, though it’s not precisely inconspicuous; but several members of this particular group are masters of the intimidating stare, and none of the heads popping out of hallways and offices and recording rooms have the nerve to object.

Michael deposits James into the front seat and then whisks them off to the nearest hospital as rapidly as he can, despite vociferous protests; it’s not that he doesn’t trust Anthony Head’s emergency skills, it’s just that he wants a professional medical opinion. Possibly three. Or four.

James sighs, and allows himself to be poked and prodded—“The things I do for you, honestly, I’m mostly all right!”—but actually stops arguing, and Michael sits there with one arm around him and smoothes irrepressible hair out of his face and can feel the too-swift flutter of the pulse in that temple, heartbeat betraying nervousness after all, through the pain.

The doctors concur with the _mostly_ -all-right assessment, though they do give James some serious lectures about taking care of himself and how much worse this could’ve been and illustrate the _worse_ with graphic hand motions that make Michael’s stomach churn. They also tell him to stay off his feet for at least a week, and to come back if anything seems to be getting more painful instead of less, and then they prescribe Vicodin, which James immediately tries to refuse.

“What the fuck, James,” Michael says, and goes and gets the prescription filled anyway. James, meanwhile, talks one of the nurses into finding him aspirin and takes _that_ , and then looks at Michael, hurt and defiance mingled in all the blue.

“I did tell you I wasn’t a fan of the more formidable medication.”

“Your aspirin’s not going to be enough to help. Is it.”

“Um…it’ll help. It won’t be enough.”

“James,” Michael starts, and stops, and shakes his head. “We’re going to talk about this, all right? At home?” And James looks down, looks away, and nods. And Michael feels inexplicably guilty, for the entire silent drive home.

He walks around to James’s side, after he’s parked the car. James has already opened the door, but is hesitating.

“Please,” Michael says, quietly, “let me help,” and James lifts his head and meets Michael’s eyes and smiles, small and tentative. “Okay.”

They manage to get James out of the seat and into Michael’s arms and safely indoors—James says “Oh, sorry!” to the abandoned grocery bags, and Michael sighs and then mentally promises the contents that he’ll come back for them later—and onto the sofa because James vetoes the bed, which is Michael’s first instinct. Propped up by pillows, James blows him a kiss; Michael wants to cry, a little, but settles for making tea instead, something to occupy his hands so they don’t shake.

He brings over the mug, and then sits down next to James, who leans against him. Outside, the rain flings itself loudly at the glass of the windows, and slides down in long streamers towards the thirsty ground.

“I love you,” Michael says, “always, no matter what,” and then takes the small Vicodin bottle out of his pocket and sets it on the table and looks at James.

Who nods, one more time, and takes a deep breath. “I can’t. Or…well, I could, I can, I have before, but…if I take them, if I fall asleep, I can’t…I can’t wake myself up. From the nightmares. If I need to.”

Michael starts to open his mouth. Closes it. Reaches for James’s hands, cold in his, instead. Sits there for a minute running thumbs gently across bare skin, the joints and shapes and freckles he knows as intimately as his own, if not more so. He’s never spent time memorizing the sensation of his own fingers and palms the way he has these, after all.

“I don’t want you to be in pain,” he says, finally.

“I don’t want me to be in pain, either.” Bright blue eyes, ocean waters scalded by hurt, meet his. They’re tinged with apology, but also affection. “This isn’t fun. But that’s even less fun. And I know it’ll happen; it always has before. Every time. So I’d rather not, if I can avoid it.”

“But you will take them. If you have to.”

“I—”

“Please. Please promise me you will. I’ll be here, right here, with you. And I’ll hold you if the nightmares—I thought you were having those less? Lately?” That hurts, too, in a different, blunter, heavier way. He _has_ thought so. Has believed that.

“I have been.” James squeezes his hands. “Having them less, I mean. With you. You know that. But less doesn’t mean never. And I know you’ll hold me; that’s partly why I’m okay not taking the painkillers. Because I can lean on you, when it hurts.”

“You can always lean on me. You didn’t actually agree.”

“I didn’t? Oh…all right, then. If it gets that bad, if I really have to, then I will. But not until then. And you’ll trust me to tell you when, and I will tell you. Fair?”

“…yes. Thank you.”

“I love you. And also you have to—to be here, if I have to do that. I know you will, but I just—I’d like you to say it one more time.”

“Oh, James,” Michael whispers, and folds both arms around him, pulling him close, trying to banish even the tiniest hint of doubt from that glorious voice. James puts his head on Michael’s chest and shuts his eyes and breathes, a little unevenly, and Michael touches his face, the curve of one cheek, the slight scruffy hint of ginger stubble where James hasn’t shaved. Kisses him on the top of the head, all the untamable hair, because that’s within reach.

“Of course I’ll be here. I want to be here. You—you trust me with this, with you, with taking care of you. And that’s still amazing, you know. And I will be here, I won’t leave you, I don’t care if you have one working knee or two or none, I’d love you anyway, you know that too, right? Not in spite of any of this, or through it, or any of that, but just because I love you. And this is part of who you are. This and, um, the Star Trek ringtones, someday you’re going to have to tell me what the phone’s saying in Klingon when I get your text messages, okay?”

And James laughs, at last, through the silvery cheers of the rain. “Um…hello, attractive warrior with impressive teeth? Unless I got the pronunciation wrong. In which case it’s possibly calling you an attractive glass of prune juice. You’d love me if I had no working knees at all?”

“Then I’d get to carry you everywhere. Not seeing a downside. Prune juice?”

“I’ll explain later. Right now I’d like you to kiss me. So I can feel it. So I can feel _you_.”

“Like this?” Very gentle. Probably too gentle. But he’s still a little afraid, someplace deep down and irrational, inside. James is _hurt_.

“Um…that was nice, and I’m not complaining, but…a bit more would be nice, too.”

“You—are you sure?”

“Yes. Because you _can_ kiss me, I’m not going to break into pieces if you try, and this isn’t that bad, it’ll heal, and I’ll be all right—you know I will, stop trying to interrupt—I’m trying to say I’ll be even more all right with you here. I always am, with you here.”

James is smiling at him, eyes all jewel-blue against the backdrop of the rain, calm and secure and content in Michael’s arms; and Michael smiles in response, touches their lips together, and whispers back, equally certain, “Yes, you are.”

 

_all of my life, I've been a-waiting_  
 _tonight there'll be no hesitating_  
 _(oh boy!)_  
 _when you're with me_  
 _(oh boy!)_  
 _the world can see_  
 _that you were meant for me_


End file.
